Until he had left her to find a way of raising their son on her own.
There was so much more she could say to him, but she did not. Her foolish weakness for him knew no bounds, it would seem. Otherwise, she never would have allowed him to kiss her. She never would have kissed him back.
“It would seem we have both been very wrong,” he said then with a funereal air. “Come, madam, I will take you to our son.”
She ignored the arm he proffered, running her tongue over lips that still felt the brand of his kiss upon them. “I do not require your escort.”
How she wished she had not kissed him.
His lip curled. “You shall have it whether you require it or not.”
How she wished she did not long to kiss him again, even now.
Oh, heart. Do be quiet. We cannot afford to indulge in your particular sort of trouble. Not now, and not ever again.
But as he trailed her all the way to the nursery, she knew instinctively that her heart and her common sense had not waged the last of their war against each other. Instead, she had a weighty feeling that the real war had just begun.
Chapter Fifteen
Clay helped Aradown from the carriage, trying to ignore the old sensations a mere touch from her gloved hand elicited in him. The moment her boot-shod feet touched the gravel drive, she released him and swept away, as if his touch had scorched her. Mayhap it did if she felt even an inkling of the need coursing through his veins after their kiss.
It took every shred of his control to keep from following her with his gaze. Even in a black travel gown, her copper locks covered by a demure midnight hat, she was so bloody lovely it made his chest ache. But the sight of the small, solemn face exiting the carriage next made his chest ache in an entirely different fashion.
“Welcome to Harlton Hall, Your Grace,” he said, striving to keep his voice good-humored for the lad’s sake. He had already been through hell, and the sudden departure from London following an attempt on his mother’s life could not have been easy on him. “Though it be humble, I hope you shall find it to your liking.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ludlow,” the lad said seriously as he stared up at the looming, partially resurrected home at Clay’s back.
He had bought the sixteenth century manor house and its two hundred acres with a notion to restore it to its original glory. He had been drawn to its forest, which had reminded him of the lush woods at Brixton Manor. But his familial home and the adjoining estate his father had settled upon him had never appealed to him in the wake of losing Ara. Harlton Hall had been his chance for a new beginning, far from the memories haunting him. The west wing was still in a sorry state of disrepair, but the main hall and east wing restoration had been completed, meaning that there would at least be a comfortable space for Ara and the lad to spend the next fortnight.
In the wake of the attempt on her life, Clay and Leo had decided the best thing to do was remove her and the lad from London. Oxfordshire was not nearly far enough, but the Fenians would not be searching for the Duchess of Burghly at a dilapidated old hall on the Isis.
The situation remained grave. Beauchamps had miraculously survived the attack, but he was still weak and unable to provide any meaningful information regarding the man who had stabbed him from behind. He thought he had heard two pairs of footfalls in the moments before the blade cut into his flesh, but he had not been certain.
As for the knife-wielding villain Clay had dispatched, there had been not a stitch of identification on his body. Nor had there been even an address or an epistle or a newspaper clipping tucked into a pocket.
With so much uncertainty, risking another attempt on Ara’s life had been unthinkable. And so it was that he welcomed his son and the woman he had once loved—the last two people he had ever fancied would pass between Harlton Hall’s Doric columns and step inside its centuries’ old halls. It had been meant to be his haven from the world. A place for his mother to spend her dotage comfortably since she did not wish to be present at Carlisle House for all the licentious gatherings Leo held as a ruse to deflect from his work in the Special League.
Ara too stood, gazing up at Harlton Hall, her expression shielded by the brim of her hat as he approached her once more. Formally, he offered her his arm to escort her. Without sparing a glance in his direction, she placed a light touch—so light it may have almost not been there at all—upon his arm. With her free hand, she reached for Edward, touching his thin shoulders in a motherly fashion, as if to reassure him.
Clay watched the simple interaction, a painful wrenching in his gut. He was reminded he was an outsider in their lives. That he was a father who had never been able to reassure or comfort his son. That his son, even now, believed he was another man’s child. All the pain and resentment festering inside him toward Ara returned tenfold, and he welcomed it, for perhaps it would chase away the pathetic longing for her he could not seem to shake, regardless of what she had done.
“Where have you brought us, Mr. Ludlow?” she asked coolly as the three of them started forward, crossing the drive to the steps that led to the double doors of the main hall.
“To a home where you will be safe,” he hedged, for though he owned it, Harlton Hall had never felt like his. He was a pretender within its walls, and though he had worked hard to amass the funds necessary to purchase it by making sound investments in property and businesses, he would always be the bastard who bought a home where a king had once stayed.
“It is not fair for us to burden a strange household. We could have traveled to Kingswood Hall instead,” she pointed out.
Over his dead, blood-soaked corpse. The day he saw her father again would be the day he left the coldhearted earl with a scar to match his own.
“Your familiar routes of travel, your familial connections, will all be common knowledge to the Fenians,” he said smoothly instead, fighting against the rage that still threatened to consume him. His scar itched, but he refrained from touching it. “One cannot hide in the precise location where one’s enemy will first look, Duchess.”
“Will the bad men find us here?” the lad asked.
Clay felt Ara’s hand tremble on his arm where she hesitantly rested her hand. And his own gut clenched at the lad’s query. “Not if I can help it, Your Grace.”
How bloody odd that title felt in his mouth, on his tongue, speaking it to his own son. How wrong. But before he could dwell upon the injustice, the doors to Harlton Hall opened.
He had not sent word ahead of their travels, needing to keep Ara and Edward’s locations as secret as possible. Thankfully, his mother—a more than capable lady of the house—had outfitted the hall with a full staff of domestics, all of whom, it went without saying, she held to the strictest standards.
